I made a total of 35 visits to Olive Garden ordering 42 bowls of pasta. Taking leftovers into account, I ate Olive Garden 59 times over 8 weeks. Excluding breakfast, that means pasta bowls made up 53% of my meals.
Joe, Megan, and Dominick also had the pasta pass. While we dined together for many meals, I ventured on 11 solo dines. Additionally over the course of the 8 weeks, 16 guests joined in on the OG experience.
There were 210 possible pasta bowl combinations. While I tried each of the 7 pastas, 6 sauces, and 5 meat toppings, I only made it through 21 unique combinations. All washed down with 72 breadsticks. See the “Food Info” tab for more fun facts related to the meals eaten over the journey.
That many breadsticks really can’t be good for a person in the long term can it? Was the 8 weeks of unlimited Olive Garden really worth it? The true cost of my meals at Olive Garden would have been $497.80. I spent $100.00. That’s $397.80 worth of free pasta! See the “Pass Economics” tab for how this stacks up to my usual food spend.
Finally, how much time did I actually spend at Olive Garden? For each visit, I recorded the time at which I entered the restaurant, recieved my pasta bowl, and left the restaurant. Over the 8 weeks, I spent 2141 minutes in Olive Garden. (That’s 35.7 hours!) The average visit time was 61 minutes and the average wait until we received our entrees was 25 minutes. The plot below shows the length of each meal and wait time as well as the location and party size.
| Appetizer | Meals |
|---|---|
| Zuppa | 1 |
| Pasta e Fagioli | 2 |
| Chicken and Gnocchi | 3 |
| Minestrone | 9 |
| Salad | 27 |
